( 340 ) 
In Van Amringe’s History of the College (1876) the garden 
grounds are said to have been 
‘« given to the college as a partial compensation for the large 
estate in Gloucester County, Vermont, which she had lost 
when Vermont was made a State 
Similar statements are found elsewhere,t and are occa- 
sionally heard in current speech; and the grant has also been 
referred to as an exchange.t 
New York by the treaty of 1790 ceded to Vermont juris- 
diction over her present territory ; she did not cede, grant or 
transfer any ¢¢/e to lands; but she declared that, on Ver- 
mont’s agreeing to pay her $30,000, all claims and titles to 
lands in Vermont under grants from the Colony or State of 
New York (other than grants confirmatory of previous grants 
by New Hampshire) should cease. Columbia College at that 
time held New York Colonial grants, made from 16 to 20 
years before, for about 54,000 acres of wildland. Many others 
held similar grants. Vermont had long prior to the treaty 
declared all such grants to be null and void, and by her citi- 
zen settlers she had long held possession of at least most of 
the lands. The intent of the treaty was to extinguish all such 
ew York claims of title (as an incident to the independence 
of Vermont and of her admission into the union), and such 
was its practical effect. 
Theimport of the expressions above quoted is, that this action 
of New York inflicted great loss on the college, and that the 
grant to her in 1814 was made and intended as a reimburse- 
ment, compensation or retribution for that act as a wrong. 
On investigation I am persuaded that this view of the 
subject is wholly mistaken; that the treaty was not a wrong- 
ful act on the part of the state and inflicted no substantial loss 
on the New York land claimants, but was rather a benefit 
to them; and that the grant was a voluntary bounty, like the 
state’s aa grants to educational institutions. 
. Columbia Col., 67, 56; not found in the History of 1904, nor in 
Piaroe het s ‘Universities and their Sons,”’ 1: 573. 1898. 
King’s Handbook of New York, 272. 
{Columbia Univ. Quart., 5: 279. 1903. 
